Call for Papers – EURAM 2026 | Track T04_07 (SIG: Family Business Research)
Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Value-Based Strategic Decision-Making in Small Family Firms and SMEs
📅 Submission Deadline: 7 January 2026 | 📍 Kristiansand, Norway | 📆 16–19 June 2026
Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to invite submissions to Track T04_07 at the upcoming EURAM 2026 Conference, hosted by the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. This track is part of the Family Business Research SIG and aims to deepen our understanding of how entrepreneurial behaviour and strategic decision-making unfold in value-laden, informally governed, and contextually embedded organisations—particularly small family firms and SMEs.
📌 Track Focus
While small firms and family enterprises represent the dominant form of enterprise globally, their strategic behaviour is still often treated as a scaled-down version of large firms. This track calls for a paradigmatic shift—focusing on how founder identity, kinship logic, and socioemotional values shape opportunity recognition, decision processes, innovation strategies, and legitimacy narratives. We seek to explore how these firms navigate uncertainty, crisis, and transformation in ways that challenge conventional strategic logic.
🔍 We particularly welcome research that explores:
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Entrepreneurial decision-making under informal governance and family control
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Interplay between values, identity, and legitimacy in strategic behaviour
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Cognitive framing of risk and opportunity in SME contexts
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Bricolage, effectuation, and value-based logic in entrepreneurial action
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Comparative perspectives on family vs. non-family SMEs
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Ecosystem embeddedness and its influence on resilience and innovation
We encourage both empirical and conceptual contributions, including processual, comparative, or configurationalapproaches. Interdisciplinary perspectives are most welcome.
👥 Track Chairs:
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Sandra Fiedler (TU Chemnitz)
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Anne Heider (Witten Institute for Family Business)
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Petra Moog (ZHAW)
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Maksim Belitski (Loyola University New Orleans)
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David Audretsch (Indiana University Bloomington)
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Christian Neusser (Henley Business School, University of Reading)
📄 For full author guidelines and submission portal:
👉 https://conferences.euram.academy/2026conference/authors-guidelines-for-full-papers/
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions about the fit of your paper. We are happy to provide guidance and look forward to engaging discussions in Kristiansand.
Best regards,
Christian Neusser (on behalf of the Track T04_07 Chair Team)
#EURAM2026 #Entrepreneurship #SMEs #FamilyFirms #StrategicDecisionMaking #Values #Effectuation #FABR #AOM #FamilyBusiness #OpportunityRecognition #InstitutionalLogics